Children`s Health at Schools: Why Children are Especially at Risk

They crawl — on floors, into cabinets, through grass, almost everywhere before they walk. Once they begin to walk, children continue to explore their surroundings. These explorations may lead to encounters with cockroaches, fleas, ticks, poisonous spiders or even rats and mice that can inhabit these same areas.

These and other pests are more than a nuisance. They can pose a serious health threat to young children who are unaware of the danger. Consider these statistics:

• Rats bite more than 45,000 people annually, mostly infants and children.
• Seven to 8 percent of the U.S. population is allergic to cockroaches. Studies of inner-city children in Atlanta with chronic wheezing, runny eyes and noses revealed that 44 percent were allergic to cockroaches.
• Rodents are responsible for, or implicated in, the spread of numerous diseases, including hantavirus, plague, acute food poisoning, rat-bite fever and typhus.
• Lyme disease, transmitted to humans by the deer tick, infects thousands of Americans annually ¾ and the numbers are rising.
• Cockroaches transmit a variety of digestive tract disorders, including food poisoning, dysentery and diarrhea.
• Mosquitoes are prime carriers of several types of encephalitis, a devastating illness that attacks the central nervous system of humans.

Part of the reason for the pesticide phobia, says former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop, is "the public doesn't have a very good grasp of the relationship between the dose of a toxic substance and its risk in human beings." Information often comes from those who use scare tactics rather than science when communicating with the public.

The truth is hard to deny. Professional pest management programs, including use of specialty pesticides can help protect the nation's children — whether they are just beginning to crawl or running at full speed — from needless health threats.

RISE is the national association representing the manufacturers, formulators, distributors and other industry leaders involved with pesticide and fertilizer products used in turf, ornamental, pest control, aquatic and terrestrial vegetation management and other non-food/fiber applications. Visit our web site at http://www.pestfacts.org.